A few months ago, a friend gifted Kaia a book called How We Eat: Celebrating Food and Feeding Tools. The book celebrates all the ways we eat, from birth to adulthood, with vivid vibrant photos of real people, real babies, real families and friends interacting and eating. It covers eating with bottles, directly from the breast, using a breast milk pump, supplemental nursing systems, G-tubes, NG tubes, and more. There aren’t a lot of words in the book, but there are some nice descriptions of what’s happening and how people are eating for each set of photos. And right now, it is definitely one of Kaia’s favorite books. Sometimes when I am cooking or doing chores, I see her sitting by her bookshelf, flipping the pages of this book and “reading” it to herself by describing what’s happening in each photo.

Last night, I was reading to Kaia before bed. She chose this as one of her three bedtime story books. As we went through the book, she asked me to stop and turn back to the previous page. She pointed at a picture of a little kid with no forearm, with a metal tool that was attached to his upper arm helping him feed.

“Where is his arm, Mama?” she asked me.

I explained to her that not everyone is born with all their limbs, so some babies are born without hands or arms or legs, and this is one of those kids. But luckily, we have tools like the metal attachment on the kid’s upper arm that can help them self-feed.

She looked pensive, touching the boy’s upper arm in the picture, then touching her own arm.

“He doesn’t have an arm?” she asked me with sad eyes. “What does that feel like? Does it hurt him?”

I told her that the child likely doesn’t know what it’s like to have a forearm on that side, and that like her, they likely don’t know anything different.

Kaia kept touching the kid’s arm in the photo and rubbing it.

“Can I help him eat?” she asked me, curiously. “I want to help him eat!”

I could feel tears coming on as she said this. It was like she felt this kid’s loss of an arm, and she immediately wanted to dive in and help however way she could. But she just didn’t know how. She expressed fear for this child’s pain, and deep sadness for the fact that this child didn’t have two full arms and hands to eat and play with. My baby isn’t four years old yet, but she has exhibited deep, mature empathy and care for others that I never even knew was possible at this age. I know for sure that when I was her age, I would never have asked questions like this at all if I saw a kid like the one in this picture.

I always hoped for Kaia to be many things. High on the list was that I hoped she possessed empathy and care for others. It appears that she doesn’t seem to have any struggle in this area. I’m so thankful for my sweet baby growing into a real, caring, loving, empathetic human.